A robot celebration

I'm not typically a sticker user but recently the lovely Jo at Dotty Pudding sent me a few to play with, including a couple of cute robots. This week I was struggling to come up with an idea for a friend’s birthday card — remembering that her academic research includes software for robotics at about the time I moved Jo's card to a new spot gave me my eureka moment.

The flow chart elements (computer generated) are a riff on something in one of our friend's research papers (yes, I went looking for extra inspiration!), background elements are a circuit board stamp; Jo’s cute robot is part of a set she got here. He’s raised up a little with some cardstock scraps. 

I used up a few extra stars left over from the tomato paste tube embellishments I cut recently for the Die Cut Divas "recycle" challenge (on this card) so I'm linking up again there. They form part of the celebratory explosion of shiny things (nail art gems being the others).

Stamps: Circuit board backgrounder (Cornish Heritage Farms, no longer with us)

Paper: Cryogen white

Ink: Tim Holtz Distress ink by Ranger (Rusty Hinge)

Other:
Robot sticker
Fineliner
Tomato paste tube metal 
Confetti die (Mama Elephant)
Nail art gems
Computer generated text

Thanks for stopping by!

Olive lover

September’s challenge at We Love Stamping is all about trees and leaves. I’ve bucked the autumn trend in terms of classic colours but olives are generally picked from September onwards so I’m still being seasonal!

The branches and olives are stamped in a fairly light grey ink so this is pretty much “no line” colouring. I filled in a bit of pale background colour with a swipe of Pan Pastel and used pencils for the colouring with some white paint pen to accentuate the blossom (artistic licence, I know it wouldn’t be there with the ripe olives!). A few clear sequins stand in for the Mediterranean sun shimmering through the trees.

Stamps:
New Awakening (Studio Light)
Birthday (Letter It range by Ranger)
Happy (from a Wasltzingmouse stamps set)

Paper: Bristol board

Ink:
Hero Arts shadow ink (Soft Granite)
Versafine by Tsukineko (Onyx Black)

Other:
Pan Pastel (Pthalo green tint)
Colored pencils
Posca paint pen
Clear iridescent sequins 

Recyled rustic reindeer

Christmas Kickstart this month is all about the reindeer with host Jo and guest elf Loll looking forward to some reindeer games filling up the gallery. Meanwhile, the Die Cut Divas are focusing on the three Rs — recycle, reuse, repurpose!

I've combined those two challenges and come up with three Rs of my own — a recycled rustic reindeer! All the die cut parts other than the stars are cut from a board envelope (you know, the ones that come from that global giant online retailer). I wasn't sure the wafer thin dies would go through but it cut perfectly and obviously it posed no problem for the steel rule die used for the banner and laurel wreath.

The gold stars are the other bit of recycling — they're die cut from a tomato paste tube, one of my favourite materials for homemade metallic embellishments.

The reindeer has a strip of card behind the top of his head to push it forward slightly and the antlers are not stuck down at all. I curved the sentiment slightly to match the curve of the banner before stamping, added some stamped plaid tone on tone for an extra rustic touch, then assembled it all.

Stamps:
Plaid Scrapblock stamp (Cornish Heritage Farms, no longer with us)
Sentiment from an old Technique Tuesday stamp set

Ink: 
Tim Holtz Distress ink by Ranger (Vintage Photo)
Memento Luxe ink by Tsukineko (Love Letter)
Adirondack pigment ink by Ranger (Snowcap)

Paper:
Red, ivory and board envelope

Other:
Cool Yule thinlets dies (Tim Holtz/Sizzix)
Regal Crest bigz die (Tim Holtz/Sizzix)
Confetti die (Mama Elephant)
Copic markers
Coloured pencil (pale pink)
Glossy Accents by Ranger
Tomato paste tube metal
White paint pen by Posca

Thanks for stopping by! You can find details of both challenges by clicking the graphics below:

Link in the chain — August

The second of the month can only mean one thing — time for the reveal of August's cards for the Card Chain challenge where 26 players exchanged happy mail around the globe.

This time I chose the theme of elephants and/or mice and the sketch to play with and my card has travelled to the lovely Gail in Norway.

I planned to use the mouse from the Katzelkraft Russian Cats set but having got it out of the cupboard I put it down somewhere and promptly lost it! In the end I decided this little Penny Black mouse would make a cheerful substitute, I think he's about to offer that daisy as a little gift in an attempt to lift poor Ellie's mood. Hopefully the cats will turn up now I don’t need them!

I did stamp and mask the mouse before stamping the elephant but made the mistake of doing it in a lighter ink colour and it really didn’t look right so I fussy cut a second one and stuck it over the top. The flower that's part of the stamp got a bit lost somehow so I made a daisy to stick over it. It's a couple of die cuts that are supposed to be flower centres and a circle made with a hole punch.

Stamps:
Les Jungles (Katzelkraft, no longer with us)
Enjoy Sayings (Katzelkraft, no longer with us)
Critter Party (Penny Black Transparent)

Paper: Bristol board

Ink:
Versafine by Tsukineko (Onyx Black)
Tim Holtz Distress ink by Ranger (Tumbled Glass, Broken China)

Other:
Coloured pencils
Christmas rose dies (Sue Wilson/Creative Expressions)
Corner Chomper 

Thanks for stopping by! The September sign up is open for a few more days, click the badge for details if you’d like to join.

Masculine op art

August's challenge at Lost Coast Designs is all about the men in our lives — feature a man or make a card for a man. Retro Rubber is “anything goes” this time, just use a stamp older than a year.

I've gone monochrome and simple, most of the men I know don't go in for lots of "stuff" on cards! This is going to a young man in his early 20s and after approving of it, hubby's comment was "I hope he's not drunk when he looks at it"!

I used a stamping platform to position the Perspective Flooring stamp so I could stamp both sides of a horizon line. Lost Coast actually make a stamp that does it for you (it's called Fourth Dimension) but I'm never one to make things easy for myself, am I? Actually, looking again at the challenge post I realise Riet used it for her sample card, maybe I was subliminally influenced although it’s used quite differently to what I’ve done here!

The die cut lettering has a slight ombre effect courtesy of a bit of Copic colouring and then I gave them the Glossy Accents treatment before sticking them on. The only other thing here is a skinny silver border added with a paint pen.

Stamps:
Perspective Floor (Lost Coast Designs, not sure how long it’s been in their catalogue but I’ve had mine since 2022)

Paper: 
Bristol board
Smooth black

Ink: Versafine by Tsukineko (Onyx Black)

Other:
Font One dies (Spellbinder)
Alphanumeric Classic Lowercase dies (Tim Holtz/Sizzix)
Copic markers
Glossy Accents
Stitched rectangle dies A6 size (Paper Rose)
silver paint pen (Posca)

Thanks for stopping by! 

 

Santa's sleigh

The challenge theme over at CAS Christmas this month is Santa’s Sleigh. I’ve gone a bit vintage-flavoured with mine this time. It’s ages since I made a card in landscape orientation!

I used kraft for my card base and then used a stitched rectangle die to emboss a frame into a layer cut slightly smaller than the card front. My gift-filled sleigh definitely looked like it could use some height and having failed to find a suitable Christmas tree image for my first idea, I realised the big man himself would fit the bill. 

The sleigh die cuts all in one piece but I wanted the body to be separate so I cut one and rubbed gold wax on the runners then cut a second in dark red card, cut the body free  and rubbed very lightly with the wax to catch the embossed detail then stuck it over the runners. The parcels and Santa are stamped, coloured and fussy cut then arranged to fill the sleigh.

I used a glitter pen to trace over the stamped sentiment (which is rapidly becoming my go-to sentiment stamp for Christmas cards!) and added a few sequins so there’s some festive glitz.

Stamps:
Christmas Mail (Crafty Secrets, no longer with us — Santa image)
Christmas Sayings (Katzelkraft, no longer with us)
Santa Stamp Here (freebie set with Making Cards & Papercraft Magazine — gift images)

Paper:
Kraft
Bristol board
Dark red

Ink:
Versafine by Tsukineko (Crimson Red, Onyx Black)

Other:
Sleigh die (Marianne Designs) 
Rub n Buff by Amaco (Gold Leaf)
Stitched rectangles dies A6 size (Paper Rose)
Coloured pencils
Spica glitter pen (red)
Copper gel pen
Clear iridescent sequins

Thanks for stopping by! Click the badge for all the challenge details:

Rose in bloom

I’ve once again combined two challenges here, We Love Stamping would like to see summer blooms and Time Out has a “take two” challenge (chose at least two from monochrome, geometric, floral, stitching, birthday, CAS). I snuck in a Splitcoast Stampers CAS challenge as well (we’re using gems this week).

For my summer bloom I decided to take a trip down memory lane and use this lovely delicate wild rose from an old Waltzingmouse set. For some reason it took me an absolute age to colour today so I was glad I’d decided to go CAS and only wanted a single bloom!

I managed everything except monochrome from the Time Out options (my stitching is faux).

Stamps:
Roses in Bloom (Waltzingmouse Stamps, no longer with us)
P009 Geometric Abstraction (Lesia Zgharda)
Sentiment so old I don’t remember where it came from

Paper:Bristol board

Ink:
Fade Out by Ink on 3
Versafine by Tsukinkeo (Smokey Grey)

Other:
Coloured pencils
Nail art gems
Memento marker (Fog Grey)

North Pole pals

The theme over at Christmas Kickstart this month is friends. I confess I made this a wee while ago but never got round to blogging it and it seemed perfect for the challenge theme so here it is.

The rectangle is a piece salvaged from a card that didn’t quite pan out. Likewise the image was coloured and cut out and then fell out of favour and was substituted with something else on another card so it was in my “bits box”.

Santa’s little helper has obviously put in a long shift and has snuggled up to his polar bear pal for a bit of R&R, along with his chubby robin companion.

Stamps:
Santa’s Workshop (Helz Cuppleditch)
Christmas Sayings (Katzelkraft, no longer with us)
Grunge Flakes (Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous)

Paper:
Watercolour
Bristol board
Black

Ink:
Versafine by Tsukineko (Onyx Black)
Brilliance by Tsukinkeo (Graphite Black)
Tim Holtz Distress ink by Ranger (various blues)

Other:
Copic Markers
Coloured pencils
Enamel Accents by Ranger (white)
Silver detail embossing powder

Fresh as a daisy

The challenge at Die Cut Divas this month is white with a splash of colour.

The Sunflower Serenade die set was recently on sale at Spellbinders and since I don’t have anything similar I caved and bought it. I thought it would make a nice daisy giving me white flowers with yellow for my splash of colour. 

I’ve never really got to grips with white on white but I figured plenty of texture was probably the way to go. I used a border embossing folder with a little bit of shenanigans — it’s not quite long enough to do the whole panel so I figured out where the daisy would be and embossed up to there then flipped round and embossed down from the top to the same point and the flower covers the flattened join.

I wanted to give the centres that lovely pillowy domed effect that daisies have. After inking the edges, I used a large ball stylus and a foam mat to gently shape them. Running a bead of glue just round the very edge stuck them to the next layer just fine. I gave them the Wink of Stella treatment as well. The daisy at the bottom has Wink of Stella on the petals too which might be just about visible on this detail picture.

Supplies:
Sunflower Serenade dies (Spellbinder)
Pop Culture border embossing folders (Cuttlebug)
Stitched Rectangle dies, A6 size (Paper Rose)
Bristol board
Smooth yellow cardstock
Sentiment stamp (so old I can’t remember where it came from!)
Smokey Grey Versafine ink
Sunshine Yellow Adirondack ink by Ranger
Clear gems (unknown maker, they were a gift from Mia)
Clear Wink of Stella pen

Thanks for stopping by! Click the badge for all the challenge details:

Link in the chain -- July

It’s the second of the month and that can only mean one thing — reveal day at Card Chain Challenge! There were 26 players this month, sending little bits of happy mail around the world. Mine has gone to Chris in Illinois this time.

From the options on offer I chose cocktails from the themes and ink blending from the techniques, aiming for a kind of “drinks by the pool” vibe.

As usual, it’s a one layer card so it’s light and flat for airmailing. I used reverse masks to blend inks inside the glasses for my cocktails and regular masks so that I could put one glass behind the other and use a stencil for the background. Not sure what the colourful cocktail on the right is but I found a picture online and used it as a guide! I used water to lift a bit of the colour from the ice cubes and a tiny bit of white pencil on the highest spots as well for highlight lines on each glass.

Stamps:
Cocktails (Visible Image)
Birthday (Letter It range by Ranger)

Paper: Bristol Board

Ink:
Versafine by Tsukinko (Smoky Grey, Onyx Black)
Tim Holtz Distress ink by Ranger (Barn Door, Spiced Marmalade, Mustard Seed, Peacock Feathers, Tumbled Glass)
Shadow ink by Hero Arts (Mint Julep)

Other:
Fibres Stencil (Visible Image)
White pencil
Gansai Tambi Starry watercolours (White gold)
Sequins
Corner Chomper

There are a few more days left to sign up for the August chain if you would like to receive some handmade happy mail. You just need to make one to send and you’ll get one for yourself: